Tag: Capping

The offer seems interesting. They, yes “they” since the article doesn’t mention what ISP it will be, but I suspect it will be Outremer Telecom, since it’s already in Mauritius. There is no confirmation yet, so it’s just my supposition.

I did say I was going to blog about Orange some time again. There was a news item that told how Orange suggested that prices remain constant and that speed increases, and ICTA wanted that prices fall while speed remains constant, which is plain stupid. However, something nicer appeared on the front of Le Mauricien today (Edit: Today = 26th Feb 2009, I am blogging this article after midnight).

If the news is correct and if what it says really happens, we are going to have a 35-45% price fall in ADSL prices. Do you believe that? A friggin 45% decrease in ADSL prices! MyT is going to follow soon according to that same article! New prices applicable as from 1st March 2009!

Seriously, this is wicked cool. Is it really? Wait a bit, you will see.

There is something I didn’t catch. There is X allowance (X is an integer) and Fair Usage Policy (FUP). I think allowance is a quota where you pay more after exceeding it, while fair usage, you don’t pay but speed falls. That’s me, so don’t consider these words to be a fact.

First lemme give you the prices and other stuff. Everything below refers to ASDL, so no MyT’s for now. 128K refers to 128K ADSL. All prices exclude VAT. Got it?

Nothing yet for 128K home (with FUP). It was not mentioned in the article, saying the info was not obtained from MT.

512K home (with FUP) falls to Rs. 750 from the current Rs. 1360.,

The very best news now: There is a new package! 1 Mbps (with FUP) priced at Rs. 1360! That’s the price of the old 512K connection! Theoretically, you can now get twice the speed for the same price!

Then for ASDL Pro, for those who interested. Vat Included I think.

256K goes to Rs. 800 from Rs. 950 (3GB cap).

512K goes to Rs. 1300 from Rs. 1540.

For Rodrigues, same thing for ADSL home. For ADSL home 256 goes to Rs. 1600 from Rs. 1860.

Personally, I think this is good news. If not for the ridiculously low capping. (3GB on 256? Seriously? That’s less than a Linux distro DVD!) I also appreciate the introduction of the fair-priced 1 Mbps and I might even consider moving to that one when the new price policies start. That’s how 1 Mbps should have been priced from the very start! Now I can call it accessible. And I can finally thank Orange for listening to me: More speed for the same price. They did just that. I don’t know why ICTA was initially rejecting that, but they were not being rational.

Also, as you noticed, the FUP does not tell what exactly is the limit. I’d greatly appreciate some more information on that. Not this time I guess.

EDIT:

Today (Today = 27th Feb 2009), news about MyT offers came out, and it’s very good news for them: Their speed doubles for the same price! 256K users will now have 512K. 512K will have 1Mbps and 1 Mbps will have 2 Mbps! Amazing!

Some new offers were also added, such as a MyT 512K with added TV channels (15 of them) for Rs. 999 / month. There will also be a 2Mbps offer will be available at Rs. 2999/month!

However, as Morinn has pointed out, there must be a catch!

I believe personally have two theories. Either Orange had the possibility to offer those speed and prices from the very start, but for some weird reason, they did not.

Or the more sombre reason: Capping and FUP will now be strictly enforced. As you probably noticed, for some users, even if they exceeded the unknown FUP limits, their speeds were not affected. I don’t know the limits, but I guess they must be around or less than 10GB. The question is: how can Orange offer twice the speed to all users, without making any upgrades to their networks or buying more bandwidth on the SAFE. Maybe I have missed something that was announced, or that it was done internally, but without upgrades, there is no logical way this can be done! Unless capping is strictly enforced.

This will keep heavy downloaders from leeching all the bandwidth, and redistribute the saved bandwidth to other users.

This is just a supposition, but a terrifying one none the least. We don’t know the limits, and therefore, don’t know when or how we are going to be capped.

Also, a commenter mentioned that 3GB capping. There seems to be a difference between capping, properly said, and Fair Usage Policy. As I said above, the “capping” policy is that if you go over the limits, you pay for additional MB’s downloaded. Whereas for FUP, it’s just that your speed decreases. Probably some kind of limit imposed, or that your connection is given less priority.

Another scarier issue: if capping (as in speed reduction) is enforced, it means that connections of users will be monitored to know what they are doing, how much and what they are downloading and from where. All this is just suppositions, but isn’t this called invasion of privacy?

Btw, remember how I was ranting about how my speed on Rapidshare was breaking and resuming every 4-5 seconds? It’s back! My download manager reports a download speed, but my router lights don’t flash. Ewww!

Note: My connection was automatically upgraded to 1Mbps today. I am having around 90-95KBps even 100+ KBps download speeds! AMAZING!! I noticed my upload went to 256 from 128! (Here I come, online gaming!!)

Ok, I stop here now to let you folks talk. I’m out of ideas. Let’s hear yours! 😛

A number of recent events occurring over the Internet prompted me to write this article. What were these events about? Well, if you want to know, they are about privacy decreasing over the Internet. Most users think that while they are online, they are nameless and faceless; One among the millions or billions of users and that they can do pretty much what they want.

Guess again buddy! In fact, I’d go as far as to say you are never anonymous over the Internet. Why? There is always your IP address. Hide it via a proxy you say? Your ISP still has your record, and if ever your proxy is not totally reliable, then you could easily be found.

I’ll be talking about the decreasing levels of privacy. “The Internet is an unregulated network with free-flow of Information”, or so the definition says. Is it really true? Not according to me. Do you consider bandwidth regulation schemes, commonly known as “bandwidth capping” to be unregulated flow of information?

You are not allowed to use some services at some times of the day, by some ISPs. That’s a lot of some’s, but it’s there. P2P throttling is becoming increasingly common among ISPs who are seeing their bandwidth being swamped with P2P traffic. This violates the basic philosophy of a free-flow of information, right?

But let’s see what the Japanese have to say when it comes to how they use the Internet.

We know that the Japanese are very good when it comes to high-speed Internet, with something like 100Mbps available at around $45 per month. We also know that Fair-Usage Policies were introduced by Orange in Mauritius, giving you a download-capping of around 10GB a month, or so we guessed. Guess what the Japan ISP, NTT did. They implemented an upload-capping of (!!) 30GB per day! Downloads, of course, are still unlimited. Ok… *shocked* Read more here.

Now for the decreasing privacy topic. Starting with the most recent now, let’s see flagrant cases of what I’d call “invasion of privacy” but which authorities seem to consider “normal”. You be the judge.

Following the major discussions taking place about Orange and its capping policies, I thought this article deserved some consideration.

Well, according to Ars Technica’s report, there has been a 25% increase in Bittorrent traffic from November 2007 to March 2008, with UTorrent being the application leader. Yep! Azureus and BitComet come after! This represents a big increase. Possibly millions of new users?

Regarding P2P, the Gnutella network is faring pretty well, being the #1 network in terms of traffic. Limewire must be thanked for this position in the list, being the leader in P2P applications.

Why did I post this article? I don’t really know. I found those facts pretty interesting, and thought I might share. In Mauritius, Orange is trying to limit the use of P2P and Bittorrent via its Fair Use Policy (FUP), whereas in the world, the use of these two services are growing rapidly, probably fueled by the megabit connections available abroad.

Although many use these services for piracy, P2P and Bittorrent have many “legit” uses such as sharing open-source distributions, and making lesser-known “garage band” artists and productions available to the public.

I personally think that many people opt for a high-speed connection because they download large files and want these faster. What’s the use of a high-speed connection if it cannot be used for downloading? I doubt you will use a megabit connection for plain browsing. Well, that’s the logic Orange is applying here. 1GB capping was just ridiculous. Now with FUP, even that limit is not known. It’s just weird. Just derive your own conclusions!